1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for providing the deaf or hearing impaired to participate in a teleconference in general, and, in particular, to a system and method that provides a platform which allows various Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems to communicate over various chat messenger systems so that a deaf or hearing-impaired person may receive a transcribed text of the teleconference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Presently, there are several methods for the deaf and hearing-impaired to interpret those speaking to them. One method is having a live interpreter, who listens to the conversation and translates the spoken words into sign language, and vice-versa. Another method is having a live stenographer, who listens to the conversation and types the spoken words so that they may be viewed in real-time and responded to. Yet another method is a stenographic, or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), program, which transcribes the spoken words in the same manner as a live transcriber.
However, teleconferencing presents particular problems to the deaf and hearing impaired. The logistics of providing one or more live interpreters or translators would be both complex and expensive. Although using a computer program, i.e. ASR, is cheaper than an interpreter/stenographer, ASR has its own problems. If the ASR program is speaker-dependent, it requires a certain amount of time to be trained to the intonations of each individual speaker. This would require multiple speaker profiles to be stored in order that the ASR program could deal with the audio input from the multiple participants in a teleconference. These profiles would use up more and more storage space. The ASR system itself would need to be more complex, because it would need to deal with several different audio streams being received simultaneously.
There is a need for a system and method that provides the ability for the deaf and hearing impaired to participate in teleconferencing without using up an inordinate amount of memory resources or an inordinate amount of computing resources for the interpretation of all the participant""s audio streams. In addition, there is a need to apply current advances in network and mobile computing to interpretive services for the deaf and hearing-impaired.
An aspect of this invention is to provide a system and method for teleconferencing with the deaf and hearing impaired.
Another aspect of this invention is to provide a system and method for teleconferencing with the deaf and hearing-impaired using distributed memory resources for storing multiple ASR speaker profiles.
Yet another aspect of this invention is to provide a system and method for teleconferencing with the deaf and hearing-impaired using distributed computing resources for performing ASR on multiple audio streams.
To fulfill the above and other aspects, a system and method for teleconferencing using distributed resources is provided. In one embodiment of the system and method,
A system and method is provided for real time teleconferencing, where one of the participants is deaf or hearing-impaired. In one embodiment of the system and method, the deaf or hearing-impaired has a chat service system, while the remaining participants have Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems and a chat service systems, such as AOL Instant Messenger(trademark). Each of the remaining participants may have a different type of ASR system, as well as a different type of chat service system. The speech of a participant is transcribed by an ASR system and then the transcription is provided to a chat service system, which translates the transcribed text into its own chat service message format. An Integration Server receives all the participant""s chat messages, which have various formats, and translates them into the format used by the chat service system of the deaf or hearing-impaired participant, thus allowing her to see the transcribed text of the conversation between the other participants. In order to enter the conversation, the deaf or hearing-impaired participant inputs text to her chat service system, which creates a formatted message text. The Integration Server receives this formatted chat message and translates it into the formats of the remaining participant""s chat service systems, thus allowing the remaining participants to see the comments of the deaf or hearing-impaired participant. In some embodiments, every participant can see the text of the input of every other participant. In other embodiments, the teleconferencing system and method is used to connect disparate chat service systems, without necessarily including a deaf or hearing-impaired participant.